Air traffic control system-state engineering is fundamentally and necessarily based upon the application of rules and requirements to assure the safety of surface and inflight operations. Traditionally, this system-state engineering has been manifested in the form of separation criteria that capitalized on diverse regenerative technologies. The advent of non-linear modalities now introduces significant user centric functionality. But these individual discipline appended applications are not harmonized, and consequently introduce risk.
It is a requirement of air navigation service providers (ANSPs) to maintain an air traffic control infrastructure sufficient in scope and magnitude that prevents, to the extent possible, unsafe proximities of flight objects. ANSPs must also define and enforce standards necessary to maintain safety criterion based on known or projected risk. The process is dynamic, not static, and requires ANSPs to constructively factor evolutions of technology and user influence.
For nearly sixty years, radio detection and ranging (radar) has been relied upon as the formulary platform through which ANSPs have promulgated their authority. This functionality has provided a robust and efficient means to understand and ensure the spatial relationships of airspace users wherever radar coverage was available. This technology has been refined over time, and regulators have embraced these refinements incrementally. Though not yet obsolete, the introduction of global navigation satellite system (GNSS) functionality has rendered radar less efficient and no longer the exclusive or preferential method of attaining optimized situational air traffic control awareness.
In the systems and methods recognized in the prior art, ANSPs have relied on detection surveillance or more rudimentary manual calculations, or procedural control, to assimilate spatial understandings upon which to apply static separation criteria. Divided amongst common interest phases of flight, which include surface, terminal, enroute and oceanic subsets, these criteria have utilized a route structure model on which short-term valuations have been made for proximity assurance.
More recent evolutions in technology have allowed ANSPs to opt for functionality that predicts the influence of traffic management initiatives and that offers assignable “window” tasks to meter operations. Vendor users including but not limited to airlines, corporations, and inflight service providers, whose primary focus is the improved efficiency of their own tactical operations model have capitalized upon the advent of more intuitive technologies. This had led to parochial efficiency gains within the air traffic control environment. As a result of these and others, the air traffic control system-state can no longer tolerate static separation criteria or narrow span, sovereign design that lacks integrated, communicative relationships.
Many ANSPs now embrace a turn to GNSS reliance. The United States Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has mandated the use of some satellite based Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B) technologies beginning in the year 2020. Operators subject to this rule will be required to identify themselves to ground-based stations used by the regulator to gather data necessary to derive ADS-B (out) position information. ADS-B (out) can be used to provide a wider and more precise geographical depiction than terrain based radar installations.
A natural evolution of ADS-B technologies may be the assimilation of data and information beneficial to both the users and the regulator. ADS-B (in) and ADS-C (contract) may provide this functionality through mutual and collaborative interrogation exchanges.
Both the FAA and the wider aviation community have precipitated and supported significant and comprehensive efforts to understand and realize the safety, operational and commercial advantage of technologies based on GNSS. Communication, navigation and surveillance (CNS) functionality now includes both airborne and ground based platforms that contribute to the optimization of aircraft and National Airspace System (NAS) operations.
The confluence of these technologies has yielded functionality that must be configured, harmonized and optimized. With Defined Interval, regulators will realize attainable, efficient, adaptive and responsive air traffic control separation standards through adaptive risk mitigation yielding enhanced safety and optimization within a harmonized system-state.
In contrast to the present invention, the prior art is not predicated on the applicability of risk associations to derive air traffic control solutions assignable to the user and is constrained only to embrace the prior art's static separation minima. Such prior art is user centric designed to affect only a single relationship with an individual user. It does not create, specify or advance a comprehensive regulator medium. Prior art describing a trajectory based operation uses projection, not understanding, to consider conflict then applies static prior art separation criteria, not risk based separation criteria.